


Hold on

by keeptheearthbelow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Contemporary AU, Gen, i wrote this while the eyes of the world were on ferguson missouri if that explains anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 22:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4238298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeptheearthbelow/pseuds/keeptheearthbelow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Schools have been shut down in a crisis, leaving it up to volunteers to get food to hungry children. Written for Prompts in Panem round 6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold on

Curfew is in an hour and a half, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything these days. Which is why most of the volunteers have headed home, and the rest have one foot out the door of the library auditorium, even though they’ve organized barely half the number of school lunches they expect they’ll need to hand out tomorrow.

Kat has the impression of them as very much like her students at about 2:30 pm – mentally, they’re already wherever they’re going next. For some of them, that’s a place they’re looking forward to. For others, not so much.

She bids goodbye to the last pair of people and keeps on divvying up the donated goods for tomorrow. Sandwich fixings here on these folding tables, to be assembled in the morning. They’ll run short of bread before the pb and j are used up. Snacks to take home over there in bags, one bag per kid. Too many of the snacks are sugary. But what are you going to do? Crated goods that are too heavy for her to move, even though she thinks healthier items are in the stockpile somewhere. She keeps sorting and bagging even when the phone in her pocket starts to buzz with tweets and texts. Of course it’s starting. She just doesn’t want to know where.

There’s a brisk knock on the door, and she looks up in terror.

A white guy comes in. But just one, and not police, unless he’s the best plainclothes ever, doing a great impression of a rumpled dad who’s unsure if he’s found what he’s looking for. She tries to unlock her shoulders, just a fraction, save the fight-or-flight for when she really needs it. She has to draw a couple breaths before she can say, “Can I help you?”

“Hi,” he says, and then, awkwardly, “I heard you all could use more pairs of hands here. Uh. But either that was a serious understatement or you’re done for the day.”

Kat folds her arms. “How’d you hear that?”

“Delly Cartwright. She’s my kid’s teacher, and my friend, and I think she was helping here earlier? And I know curfew’s in an hour, and I wanted to help more today, but it just … ugh. Nothing worked out. So I wanted to see if there’s anything I could do, last-minute.”

She could use somebody who can lift what he looks like he can lift, actually. But what the fuck? “You want to parachute in here and say you helped for the day? I don’t need that. Sure you wouldn’t rather go join a protest and get in front of cameras?”

He seems taken aback. “I’d rather not.”

“Yeah, ‘cause solidarity only goes so far, huh? Good. Go feel good about yourself somewhere else.”

“No, I – look. I tried to get the restaurant, the restaurant I work for downtown, to donate food, and they won’t.” He sounds pissed. “I didn’t want to come here empty-handed. But this is all I can do, so if you have anything I can help with, please, I’ll do it. My kids aren’t the ones who need these lunches, but their friends and classmates do. And it’s not my voice, or my face, that deserves to be on air right now. I know that. So don’t tell me to do that.”

Kat looks down at the table. Hmm. More self-aware than your average rumpled dad.

“My name is Pete. Pete Mellark,” he adds.

She frowns at him. “Curfew’s in an hour – shouldn’t you get home to your kids?”

“Well, my ex … uh, their mom … she took them to her parents. She thinks it’s dangerous here.”

Sirens are rising in the distance. “It is.”

He nods. “Do you have kids?”

“No.”

“I guess you’re a teacher?”

“Yes. Third grade.”

He shuffles and looks momentarily lost. “What … what do you say to the kids about this? When they come pick up lunch, or when they were still in school?”

The tweets keep arriving in her pocket and she doesn’t want to look at them and she doesn’t want any of this to be happening. She didn’t want the last of the volunteers to leave. This Pete seems all right. Sincere. “Look, if you’re going to stand here chatting all night, get into those crates and find the healthy snacks and start putting one in each bag over there.”

“Okay.” He seems relieved to have direction. And he moves the crates as easily as if they’re shoeboxes. After a minute poking through them, he says, “Hey, um.”

She waits.

“I don’t know your name.”

“Kat.”

“I’m so sorry, I should know your name from the faculty list the elementary school sent home. Though I’ve only seen it the once – my kid’s a first-grader.”

“It’s Katrina Everdeen on that list. But I stopped going by Katrina.”

He nods, understandingly. “Okay. Kat. What I wanted to ask is, where’s the bar set for these snacks counting as healthy?”

She approaches and helps him weed out the most sugary options. And, mercifully, he stops talking and just works.

Half an hour before curfew, she straightens up. More of the tabletops are filled, bags ready to go with everything except sandwiches. They might actually be able to give a lunch to every child tomorrow. She pulls her phone out of her pocket to check the situation before driving home.

Just as she does so, blue lights flicker through the blinds covering the auditorium windows. And, faintly, she hears shouts rising.

“Oh, no,” Pete says quietly. He goes to the window and peeks between the blinds.

Kat scrolls through her phone, her stomach sinking so fast it hurts. She should have looked earlier. She should have … but then who would have gotten these children something to eat?

Pete turns to her just as there’s a crumpling, collapsing noise outside. “I think they’re in two directions.”

She shakes her head, resigned. “I can’t go home anyway. Authorities closed off our neighborhood.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. You should maybe move away from the window.”

She turns off the overhead lights. There’s a little illumintation from the exit sign. Very funny, she thinks. There is no exit. No peace. She sits in a folding chair at one of the tables. Pete moves around some little packages of pretzels or something as if he’s going to be able to get anything else done, and then he sits down too.

“Do you want to make a break for it?” he asks quietly.

“No,” she says. “They’d decide I was looting.”

“But you’re a teacher.”

“All they’ll see is brown skin.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. “Any help that I’m here too?”

“Doubt it. But if you want to get out of here, feel free.” She tries not to sound bitter.

“I really wouldn’t feel right about leaving you here.”

The cacophony outside gets louder. There’s a flashbang, leaving her eyes dazzled until she can blink away the afterimage around the edges of the blinds. The blue lights are swirled with red.

“You said ‘our neighborhood’ – do you need to call anybody who’s waiting at home? I can step into the hall.”

Kat shrugs. “Just habit. My mom and sister used to live with me.”

“Oh. You’re from here then?”

“Yep. You?”

“Same.”

Funny how you could grow up so close and never cross paths with someone.

Glass is breaking outside. People are screaming. She sniffs the air, but there’s nothing, just a slight smell of bread from the plastic-wrapped loaves on the next table. Would gas be able to seep into the auditorium? She hopes the building won’t end up on fire. She puts her head down on the table briefly. There isn’t another distribution site yet for school lunches.

“Well, thanks for staying, Pete,” she says, hoping it comes off as wry. But she thinks she might just sound frightened.

She looks over to find the blue light catching in his eyes. His expression says he wants to help with everything and he doesn’t know where to begin. And he doesn’t even sound regretful when he answers, “Thank you for staying, too.”

The building shakes, could be caused by anything, really. Their hands meet in the middle of the table and hold on.

**Author's Note:**

> Original author's note: Warning for off-screen civic violence similar to what’s in recent current events. I should note that I’m not sure about this story. I’m writing something I know very little about, here, and all errors and nonsense are mine. But the news has been on my mind.


End file.
